A Word About WordPress

When the semester began, I did not know much about the field of digital humanities. I have since seen many examples of DH tools and what can be accomplished through their use. One thing among the tools we have studied in class especially stands out to me: They have little in common. It amazes me that something like Trello, SketchUp, and WordPress can all be considered tools of part of the same field, because they accomplish such a polar array of tasks. I found it really interesting that one field could be comprised of so many different ideas.

WordPress is a DH tool that I might continue working with after this class ends. It seems like everything important in this age has a website, and WordPress is a simple yet effective tool for creating one. What impresses me most about WordPress is that despite its simplicity, the variety of websites that can be created from its program, what they might look like, be about, or could have uploaded and linked to them, is nothing to scoff at.

I am also somewhat familiar with Blogger, a blog-tool that was popular a few years ago. Blogger pages tended to be different in their background color and title front. Otherwise, there was not much, other than writing a post that could be played with or achieved. WordPress, on the other hand, has a membership directory, has an archive index, easy ways to create drop-down tabs and linkages to other parts of the blog, can look professional, can handle multiple authors, specialized content, and above all, and look like a real website rather than a blog. It is also completely free.

To avoid sounding like an advertisement for WordPress, it is also worth noting that it can get tricky to do your own coding with it for free. The WordPress.com version, at least, does not seem to provide the flexibility of creating your own codes without having them licensed through a company. This might not seem like a big deal to people who need structure in their webpages, but it can take points away from the program’s flexibility aspect. It is not truly customizable.

WordPress also seems like the kind of tool that takes a lot of practice and time to go from simply being able to use it, to being able to use it in a way that sheds the best possible light on what you’re trying to do. For instance, if someone were to use WordPress as a professional website, they need to make sure it looks unique, is edited, is tightly pulled together, and can give off the best impression of themselves. Someone might not be able to accomplish this on their first go-around of WordPress, because its features are so numerous and so much of what can be done with it requires additional knowledge of plug-ins and installations .

For my purposes, because I do not have much knowledge of coding or plug-ins, WordPress seems like a free and easy website/blog tool that I will definitely go to should I need one.